I “framed” it in the hoop and tied a red ribbon on top to make it a Christmas ornament. It works up very quickly and I think it’s adorable. I would definitely recommend this if you like to cross stitch and are short on ornaments for your own tree or homemade Christmas gifts for friends and family.

I finished my other two cross stitch projects by putting them in frames. I wasn’t too sure how to make this look finished inside the hoop. I couldn’t find too much in the way of instructions online either so I just winged it. I cut the Aida cloth as close to the hoop as I could. Then I placed a piece of red fabric under the hoop with the cross stitch design facing up. I traced around the hoop onto the fabric with a fabric pen. I cut the fabric out along the line with scissors. I put a small amount of fabric glue on top of the edge of the Aida cloth that was sticking up on the back then I placed the fabric circle on top of that. After I was sure it was dry, I used scissors again to cut out any pieces of red fabric that hung over the edge and could be seen from the front. I think an X-Acto knife is the solution for getting a perfect circle but since it’s just the back of the ornament I feel fine with how it turned out using this method.

I didn’t find cross stitch all that enjoyable when completing my first project. I spent most of the time struggling with knots in the floss. I keep seeing so many adorable cross stitch patterns and I like to have a small, portable project for long car rides or to work on when I only have a few minutes so I decided to give cross stitch another chance. It was a lot less frustrating this time! Here it is, an homage to our labrador mix puppy, Sookie.

Here are two photos I just took of Sookie in the yard, for comparison and because I want everyone to look at my sweet baby dog.

I googled “labrador cross stitch patterns” and this one from fab.com was by far the cutest. I didn’t need an entire cross stitch kit so I transferred the design to 14 count graph paper (I got here) by counting the stitches to make a pattern. I also moved the heart from the booty area to the chest. I was going to put her name underneath but decided it looked better without it.

Cross stitch pattern

Here it is completed, ironed, and ready to be framed. I used this method from Instructables.com. I used the thin piece of cardboard that came inside the frame and sewed the edges of the cross stitch fabric together around that.

A closeup.

I’m so happy with the results that I’m planning more projects. I bought two tiny hoops for Christmas ornaments and have a favorite Don Draper quote in the works as well.

Cross stitch is a supposedly fun thing I’ll (probably) never do again. I really like the look of it but I hate threading the needle so to avoid doing that so often I kept trying to use really long pieces of thread which got tangled and knotted and caused me great sadness. I was also trying to re-watch seasons one and two of Downton Abbey while I was cross stitching so it became less a fun craft and more a mean, cruel thing that kept me from devoting my full attention to the Crawleys. I’m really happy with the finished project though so maybe I’ll feel up to doing another one after I’ve had a bit of a break.

The finished design – a Christmas gift for our friends who got married in February.

Designing it was the most fun. I used an alphabet generator I found online to get the words charted out. Then I printed this special graph paper for my aida cloth and drew the marks for the words. I added the marks for the ornaments which I got from a pattern on the Subversive Cross Stitch website (where I bought my aida cloth and thread). It took two tries to get everything centered correctly but that part was fun so I didn’t mind.

Personalized cross stitch design

Once the cross stitch part was finished, I ironed the cloth and followed these instructions to frame it. This part was kinda fun too.